Reaction of alkylamine surfactants with carbon dioxide: relevance to nanocrystal synthesis

Nataly Belman; Jacob N Israelachvili; Youli Li; Cyrus R Safinya; Joel Bernstein; Yuval Golan

doi:10.1021/nl900534m

Reaction of alkylamine surfactants with carbon dioxide: relevance to nanocrystal synthesis

Nano Lett. 2009 May;9(5):2088-93. doi: 10.1021/nl900534m.

Authors

Nataly Belman¹, Jacob N Israelachvili, Youli Li, Cyrus R Safinya, Joel Bernstein, Yuval Golan

Affiliation

¹ Department of Materials Engineering and Ilse Katz Institute of Nanotechnology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva 84105, Israel.

PMID: 19374385
DOI: 10.1021/nl900534m

Abstract

Exposure of tetradecylamine, hexadecylamine, and octadecylamine to CO(2) results in their transformation to alkylammonium alkylcarbamate (AAAC) pairs, which we find is a major source of irreproducibility in nanoparticle synthesis. Controlled exposure to CO(2) allows for highly uniform, ultranarrow ZnS nanorods coated with tetradecylamine to be reproducibly obtained in a single step. The crystal structures of the alkylamines and their AAAC analogs were investigated by powder X-ray diffraction and their isostructural three-dimensional unit cells are reported.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't
Research Support, U.S. Gov't, Non-P.H.S.